Safeguarding the nation: the Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Philadelphia, where, after a two-year review, the organisation this week reaffirmed its policy of excluding gays. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP

This is a point of fact, not mere conjecture. Because the Scouts are already, despite their very best efforts at concealment, on the record as having had similar difficulties as those other allegedly gay-free institutions with sexual abusers among the men it has entrusted with its youth. And for similar reasons. Not because the molesters were "gay" – in fact, LGBT people make up a fraction of child abusers and the sexual preferences of the sick, primarily male adults who molest children skew towards age rather than gender – but because the organization's leaders refused to discipline the child abusers in its midst or to involve the police, long past the time when they knew of instances of sexual abuse.

An impressive piece of investigative reporting by the Oregonian during the trial documents numerous incidents where Scout officials allowed known abuse to continue. They ignored reports about William E Tobiassen, a longtime Scout leader with sons of his own, for more than two years. The abuse was only exposed "when the teenagers told a counselor and then police what had happened. Even then, internal memos show, the Scouts executive overseeing Tobiassen didn't want to ban him from scouting until there were formal charges."

Oregon has no law mandating Scouts to report their suspicions to authorities (in contrast to teachers, doctors and others), and national headquarters was quick to advise the Oregon Scouts of their legal right to keep that information confidential. Not coincidentally, secret files obtained by the Oregonian during its investigation show no record of Scout leaders alerting authorities to adults suspected of sexually abusing youth in at least 11 other instances.

There are remarkable similarities between the Boy Scouts' and the Roman Catholic church's handling of the sexual abusers in their midst. Both institutions documented numerous instances of abuse, failed either to discipline the adults involved or alert the authorities, and then decided, as the church did in 2002, at the height of its own sexual abuse scandal, that gays were the problem.

Which brings us closer to the heart of the matter. Ignore all of the Scouts' official mumbo-jumbo about the (unidentified) leaders who comprised the special committee of top Scout leaders that made this decision, especially the part about their alleged "diversity of perspectives and opinions". As the LA Times notes, what's really happening here is a business decision about the organization's sustainability, driven by the influence of two of the Scouts' most powerful benefactors: the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches. About 400,000 of the 2.7 million members left in the dwindling organization, "belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", which "encourages members to become involved in the Boy Scouts, and has its own section on the Boy Scouts of America webpage.

Counter-balancing the homophobia and financial clout of the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches are the gay-friendly policies and financial clout of board members like Ernst & Young and AT&T, both of which have expressed their reservations with the Scouts' ongoing anti-gay policies. As in all politics, when the importance of continuing to receive such sponsors' money outweighs the churches' clout, the Scouts' policy will change. Good luck with that, boys.